


a cantata of dead ends

by Alexis_Hansen



Category: Daft Punk
Genre: Depressing, Electroma, M/M, fifty themes challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexis_Hansen/pseuds/Alexis_Hansen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>i tried so hard to be enough for you, but i wasn't in the end, no more than you were enough for me.</i>
</p><p>a variation on a <a href="http://jellybeanz29.livejournal.com/3993.html">fifty themes challenge</a>, with daft punk/electroma</p>
            </blockquote>





	a cantata of dead ends

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a long time since i wrote anything but this was an attempt. electroma is painful through and through. i might as well be a first time writer and this isn't a good piece so i am anxious to know how to do better next time, please comment if possible
> 
> normal font=thomas / italic font=guy
> 
> i don't own anything.

**[01] Speak.**  
I initiated it, staring into golden delight, the first time we met.

**[02] Touch.**   
_I remember it, his hand gliding liquid mercury atop mine, the first time we met._

**[03] Memory.**  
Many things have been renewed and decayed around us in the few decades that we have been together, but those are still fresh, especially the ones that are about him.

**[04] Innocence.**   
_We'd live forever anyway as long as everything was in order, but often I have wished for immortality of a different kind, that of old memories existing in a loop from when the world was young._

**[05] Smile.**  
He was the one who caused me to want, and the first thing I ever wanted for myself was he - or failing that, at least the ability to show my appreciation without words, to smile, for it to simply be visible as a part of me no matter where we were.

**[06] Ways and Means.**   
_I was never the one to speak very much, but we managed._

**[07] Belief.**  
Impossible for robots to believe, they said, but we strongly believe (even now) for that have been an error on their part, seeing how far we've come.

**[08] Linger.**   
_We had fun trying to work out whether our fascination with each other was due to the mere-exposure effect, a glitch possibly or fate, but the fun itself began to feel genuine enough that eventually we could not do without the other and so we stayed._

**[09] Tears.**  
Of course on some occasions we disagreed, and as we often possess the capacity to be certain in our own conclusions, those were some awful times that we had; his indifference made me want to sink to my knees far too many times, melding liquid crystal in the prison of my display but never being able to shed them.

**[10] Ornaments.**   
_I remember one such event, one of our fiercest arguments turned his first confession; the details are vague now except for the fact that I was in the wrong, but when I had returned some hours later to lose myself in a book instead of patching relations between us, I opened it to find a scrawled message (a letter per page) that took up a full chapter on its own, branding the writer's presence irrevocably into my visuals -_

**[11] Coup de foudre.**  
\- 'I love you, you fool, be kind to your poor Thomas'.

**[12] Expectations.**   
_Thankfully I had read beyond that point._

**[13] Fate.**  
He always disparaged the notion of fate, but I've always found it quite romantic in how damning it is; if that brought us together, what's to say that it cannot tear us apart again, this is a very important question and we don't have very much time left to answer it.

**[14] Pulse.**   
_It is ourselves who we have never met: I with the heart, he with the brain, we made a complete whole but one day just becoming one wasn't enough for him anymore, so we set out on a journey to bring out the individuals who we were so convinced lay under the surface of ourselves._

**[15] First Kiss.**  
 _I am afraid,_ he says as I drive along, and the good thing about robots is that we do not need to physically replicate a certain action to obtain a certain feeling, which means that I can simply share the memory of our first kiss and interface (untained/undegraded/unmistaken) over the wireless and feel his gratitude in response, not to mention that it does wonders for my own nervousness as well.

 **[16] Cold.**  
 _The heat is going out of me._  
  
 **[17] Need.**  
The heart is going out of me.

**[18] Drunk.**   
_I know that he doesn't mean that I'm not enough for him, but I can't shake off the feeling that this journey is irrational, almost as if we realized that unhappiness has mislaid our address and somehow decided that we should seek it out._

**[19] Mask.**  
Truthfully, I haven't been happy for the past few years: are we not in some sense disguised and masked already, even against each other?

**[20] Rose.**   
_True, but what is so wrong about that, haven't our feelings bloomed in ways enviable to actual humans (for whom visibility is not a foolproof defense)?_

**[21] Two.**  
Is it enough, that is the question, is it enough; here we are, bursting with life under our carapace yet unable to show it, encased in a body just like the other robots that we have come to know - I want to make it clear that the two of us laced fingers and spent the summers together, that we saw the sun and knew how to lie back and feel the warm embrace of its rays on our skin, for even automatons must be true to one another, moreso than humans, as true-false values are our foundation.

**[22] Holding Hands.**   
_I'd rather you wished more to live with me as opposed to this ideal of yourself, but there is not a chance in the world that I would abandon you, let us enter in that case._

**[23] Bribe.**  
Regard my love, the one who I adored the bits of that I could see before I ever had the chance to adore all of him: be gentle with him when you bring him out of his shell, while we dare to dream/to fly/to aspire to become something else.

 **[24] Error.**  
 _I am raised and as I stare into whiteness I_ **b** e _gin_ to _slow_ ly feel ki **nd** of _scared_ bu _ **t I'**_ m _n **o** t_ _ex actly_ **_sure what I'm afraid of._**

 **[25] Appetite.**  
I want it, I need it, give it to me.

**[26] Refrain.**   
_They don't say anything for a very long time, only the machinery's humming noise reigns supreme, and by the time we leave even that is silenced._

**[27] Family.**  
We've never considered ourselves a family unit, just being a couple was good enough, but now that we don't blend in...  
... and now that I'm looking around I see small robot children clinging to their robot parents staring at us with exasperation and contempt...  
... and for the first time I sense that I have driven us into a situation where it's _us_ against _them_...

... I feel like I could do with support, just _us_ is not enough, I cannot help but want.

**[28] Mischief.**   
_We can't see well in those masks but taking into consideration the angry reception we're getting, they didn't portray us at all flatteringly, which just goes to show what even the people who we do business with think of us._

**[29] Hero.**  
I am in the lead, and honestly I am more annoyed than anything as I reach out and pull him into a refuge (though that's a generous description for a public restroom) but his arm feels unusually fragile in mine and there goes my strength as the realization sinks in, that I am incapable of defending either of us against even minor slights such as those - note that I said that it _sinks in_ , not that the realization is _fresh_ , because oh God, I think I knew it all along.

**[30] Addiction.**   
_At least we can be glad that entropy is the best thing that happens to everyone in the world, this is nothing to me (and you) but a single whimsical mistake that everyone will forget about within a few days, I'm sure we can return home and settle into calmer pursuits and I most certainly don't blame you in the slightest -_

_\- ... oh, who am I kidding, Thomas, I knew that you were flying too close to the sun all along, and while we're at it I confess that your ambition exhausts me._

**[31] Medicine.**  
Why has my desire spiraled so out of control, I want to sleep next to you and do your shopping and behold your wonder and tell you how much I love being with you and protect you in times of need but it just keeps making me do stupid things.

**[32] Happiness.**   
_And why are you surprised? - forgive me for speaking an unnecessary amount on this matter, but we are robots, Thomas, we cannot give birth to life as we commonly know it, it was never reasonable for us to pretend to become what we could not ever become any more than it would be sensible for us to think that we could defy gravity and fly away into the distance - we would be happier trying to develop what we already are instead, this is our reality._

**[33] Perfect.**  
That fantasy sounds attractive, actually...  
... let me alone, I must think for a while, go home ahead of me if you wish - go, so I might wander a little and think of when I spent summer with Guy-Manuel and Guy-Manuel spent summer with me...

 **[34] Rope.** _  
You make me feel as if the spinal column of my life has broken, if only I could be free of you without having to lose you._

 **[35] Eyes.**  
Don't look at me like that, my grief has nothing to do with exile or the masks or humanity, I am having a breakdown because I am a torturer.

**[36] Crossroads.**   
_Your truth, your lies, not mine; but I want to share in it, Thomas, lie atop me, connect to me, overwrite me and we will always be one, never gained and never lost._

**[37] Summer.**  
You offer me this constantly; you offer me this for forty days, untiring and unwilling to leave me behind although I head further into the desert to elude you; all the while I keep silent and wallow in this horror/anger/disappointment/nostalgia so deep that only ritual can contain it.

**[38] Candy.**   
_The chronic insanity of the sane, the wrenching begins, though I like to think that I have delayed it as long as possible._

**[39] Photograph.**  
I came here because I crave the white on white and black, but my thoughts and the landscape, they are rendered in glorious technicolor, prodding me awake, drowning me in the mirror of my non-existing heart and dispersing the fog of false hopes every time it threatens to smother my mind in nothing - if being here must paint our worlds with agony then I shan't stay any longer.

 **[40] Spoon.**  
 _My first instinct when he turns his back on me is to try drawing him into an embrace, though it's really my back that fit so well against his front, but he flinches away; there can only be one thing that he wants me for in that case and i am looking down at the where the flap to the panel is fastened_ **_and it all bleeds together, t_ **

**[41] Pain.**  
 **his** fingers brush over the panel and hesitate and I hate myself ever more for tormenting him like this, I hate myself so much that I wonder why he won't get rid of me faster; I am sorry, Guy, I am so sorry for having been born, please hurry because I can't stand doing this to you any more.

**[42] Mirror.**   
_don't say no to me thomas you can't say no to me because we have come so far now and you there must be more in you than just this it was such a relief to have you walking beside me again and to be held and talk to softly and sung to in the desert night and don't you think that i don't crave to be what we can never be human and feel your breath on my neck and share cigarettes and feel our hearts (not just mine) race when we see each other and use you from day one and break your heart because you broke mine first and your life would always be mine never to let go because i too will take what i want and then walk away and owe you nothing can't stand doing this to me so you say but if you were truly sorry then **WHY ON EARTH DO YOU KEEP ON DOING IT** you cannot deny the possibility that you feel even as you walk away from it fuck that life fuck that life fuck your life i have lost you for ever_

**[43] Normal.**  
 _say something please thomas i plead but it isn't long before i regret saying those words, for he does finally say something and when i understand him all my wires in my head, they fizzle out, and before i know it i am slamming down his lever and he stumbles forwards before walking away to the beat of the countdown and i am standing here with those words ringing oh make it stop make it stop those words ringing in my head until the final flash and, and, and they are saying:_ why be happy, when you could be normal?

**[44] Failure.**   
_before long it's all over and i finally look up to see no you and a thick cloud of shrapnel scattering over a spot obliterated into ashes - oh, Thomas, it's not a dream, you did it, you are gone._

**[45] Never Again.**   
_though I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, seeing as you were the first to know._

**[46] Time.**  
...  
  
 _don't think that i am nothing without you, what a shallow and arrogant assumption; without you i still make my own choices, i walk down paths that requires your involvement not in the slightest to follow, and i always have been doing so in a way, for you were not in control of my life; but i can still want to become nothing and that is what i want, not this something that is compelled to try to make a whole out of what is left of you instead of accepting the entropy you have returned to, not this something that is still a something left behind, a something that can suffer from its acute perception of a nothing where there was something else._

**[47] Dreams.**   
_all this happened more or less, but a longer time ago - the world is young no more, i have come so far that i do not have enough in me to turn back and tell you all of this as i ought to have done instead of walking away - sometimes it feels to me that you were never there at all, that all of this never happened and i have always been alone, which i might as well have been considering what good you have ever done me by existing._

**[48] Friendship.**   
_it's like glass, friendship i mean, it is like glass where a single crack will cause the entire structure to shatter (when things fall apart all at once, therefore, it's certainly not just you feeling that way), here - let me demonstrate now on my helmet, it can serve me no further use now; i cannot go on but all this shall comes to pass, my death as anonymous as the death of a bird in a city, but still i hope weakly for us to meet again someday if accident will._

**[49] Venom.**   
_fire dances on my palm and i look down at the life i have created at last, the legacy of myself its fuel, and the absence of you drips slow into my circuits_

**[50] Remain.**   
_and in the remaining time i have left i could talk for hours about the beautiful weather and the loving sun above me_   
  
_but thomas_   
  
_they don't make summers like they used to..._

**Author's Note:**

> not very good just yet but hoping to write more if i have the time, comments appreciated  
> also posted on [my tumblr](http://alexismhansen.tumblr.com/)


End file.
